9/24/2023 0 Comments Average carbon footprintAnother limitation is that this approach tends to underestimate the consumption levels of the richest groups due to well-documented misreporting and sampling errors 15. ![]() Given the data-intensive process, this approach has not looked at the evolution of global emissions. To the extent that micro-level data are available, this method is the best way to measure global carbon inequality associated with individual ‘consumption’. These surveys are linked to Environmental Multi-Regional Input-Output models (EMRIOs) to provide estimates of energy consumption or emissions per consumption group. 8, 13, 14 that mobilize the large set of consumption surveys available from the World Bank Global Consumption Database, as well as additional consumer expenditure surveys done in rich countries. ‘Bottom-up’ approaches use household-level microdata to produce macroestimates. There are two broad approaches to the measurement of global carbon inequality. The three decades saw critical shifts in the distribution of world economic growth 12, which have not been systematically studied from the point of view of GHG emissions inequality. Third, the paper focuses on the distribution of emissions over the 1990–2019 period, that is, from the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report to the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, the method developed allows explicitly distinguishing between emissions from private consumption and investments, making it possible to better understand the drivers of emissions among wealthy groups. The methodology therefore makes it possible to track individual GHG emission levels with more precision than previous longitudinal carbon inequality estimates 9. These economic inequality data are combined with GHG footprints from input-output models thanks to a newly assembled set of country-level information on the link between individual emissions, consumption and income in more than 100 countries. Compared with previous work on global carbon inequality 7, 8, 9, 10, this paper presents three major developments in terms of data, methods and scope.įirst, the paper uses novel income and wealth inequality data from the World Inequality Database 11 to track inequality from the bottom to the top of the distribution. This paper addresses these issues by harnessing recent conceptual and empirical progress in the measurement of income, wealth and GHG emissions. This jeopardizes any efforts towards sustainable lifestyles. ![]() As a matter of fact, researchers, policymakers and civil society struggle to establish even basic facts about which groups of the population contribute to emissions growth, or mitigation. To properly understand the relationship between economic inequality and climate change, sound and timely data about the distribution of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions between individuals and across the globe are needed. These findings have implications for contemporary debates on fair climate policies and stress the need for governments to develop better data on individual emissions to monitor progress towards sustainable lifestyles.Ĭlimate change and economic inequalities are among the most pressing challenges of our times, and they are interrelated: failure to contain climate change is likely to exacerbate inequalities within and between countries 1, 2, 3, 4 and economic inequalities within countries tend to slow the implementation of climate policies 5, 6. Finally, the bulk of total emissions from the global top 1% of the world population comes from their investments rather than from their consumption. Contrary to the situation in 1990, 63% of the global inequality in individual emissions is now due to a gap between low and high emitters within countries rather than between countries. While per-capita emissions of the global top 1% increased since 1990, emissions from low- and middle-income groups within rich countries declined. Since 1990, the bottom 50% of the world population has been responsible for only 16% of all emissions growth, whereas the top 1% has been responsible for 23% of the total. In my benchmark estimates, I find that the bottom 50% of the world population emitted 12% of global emissions in 2019, whereas the top 10% emitted 48% of the total. ![]() Here I estimate the global inequality of individual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 19 using a newly assembled dataset of income and wealth inequality, environmental input-output tables and a framework differentiating emissions from consumption and investments. All humans contribute to climate change but not equally.
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